Court: Butter knife isn’t a deadly weapon

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It was a moment of terror for a Los Angeles high school student who lay on the ground, held down by two fellow students, while a 15-year-old classmate stood over him with a knife. Fortunately, it was a butter knife that broke at the handle when the assailant tried to use it.

The knife made it into the legal casebooks last week when a state appeals court overturned the youth’s felony conviction for assault with a deadly weapon and said the crime was only a misdemeanor assault.

A knife with a rounded blade is not an inherently deadly weapon, and it wasn’t used in this case “in a manner capable of producing and likely to produce death or great bodily injury,” the Second District Court of Appeal said in a 3-0 ruling.

The defendant, identified as Brandon T., was placed on probation for the felony assault. The ruling probably won’t change his sentence, but will at least remove the felony from his record, said his lawyer, David Polsky.

The court said Brandon got angry at a classmate in May 2009 for questioning whether another student knew how to read. While the classmate was walking on campus, the court said, Brandon grabbed him from behind and two other boys pulled him to the ground.

Brandon held the knife against the youth’s cheek and throat and tried to slash it across his face, but only raised welts, according to the victim’s testimony. Then the handle broke off, and Brandon and his friends ran away.

In overturning a juvenile court judge’s finding that the crime was a felony, the appeals court said a deadly weapon is an object that is either designed to cause death or serious injury or is used in a way that is likely to have that effect.

A pointed object, such as a pencil, can be a deadly weapon if stabbed into someone’s neck, the court said. But even if Brandon intended to injure his victim, the court said, the butter knife wasn’t capable of deadly force in the way he was using it.

Brandon didn’t testify, and Polsky acknowledged that he wasn’t sure what his client had meant to do. But, he said, “you can’t punish somebody based on speculation.”